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The [San Bernardino] attack stoked fears of Islamic extremism within the United States but the shooting has become renowned for a different reason: a showdown between the FBI and Apple over access to Farook's mobile phone. Now a new report [PDF] by the US Department of Justice's internal inspector general, published Tuesday, has blown open the case and indicates the FBI might have been trying to play Apple for a patsy.
The report title is remarkable in itself: "A Special Inquiry Regarding the Accuracy of FBI Statements Concerning its Capabilities to Exploit an iPhone Seized During the San Bernardino Terror Attack Investigation." Which could perhaps be more accurately titled: "Did the FBI lie about not being able to break into a terrorist's phone in an effort to win a legal precedent granting it access to everyone else's digital devices?" And the answer is, remarkably, yes and no.
[...] In the end, the issue was resolved the day before a crunch court hearing when the FBI said it had found a third-party solution to cracking the phone and no longer needed to force Apple to break its own encryption. The timing of that last-minute back down raised suspicions that the FBI had engineered the showdown to create a legal precedent that would force US companies to give it backdoor access to everyone's digital devices now and in the future.
[...] [The] report does flag some very disturbing conversations and inconsistencies that appear to point quite clearly to the fact that the FBI made the most out of the situation and may have done its best not to find out if some parts of the FBI were able to crack the phone in order to pursue its legal case.
Also at Ars Technica
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @10:58PM
The man punched and punched and punched. He then noticed that the woman's face had turned into bloody mush and that his fists were dirty with her blood. This angered the man even more. How dare this filthy sow dirty his noble fists! He punched and punched and punched...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @11:12PM (6 children)
Whether you go to their public nonsense about the last election (shameful regardless of the side you pick, if any), or you go all the way back to the Hoover days, the FBI has a long history of manipulating the country for its own purposes as a power-hungry bureaucratic entity. The FBI has never seen a power that it didn't want, and appears to, institutionally, actively resent that people don't care for its intrusions.
Well, duh. The moment that you figure that out from a long, long, LONG, quite well-documented history, this little stunt becomes a pure sideshow. So they want backdoors and are perfectly happy to engage in political manipulation? Yup, that's the FBI we all know.
Your tax dollars at work!
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday March 30 2018, @04:03AM (4 children)
how is the fbi any diff than any other authority org?
they ALL want power. more. always more. never want to give any back.
senate, judges, cops, all the same. all attract the same personality type.
basically, anyone who wants that job, should not get it.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 30 2018, @01:52PM (2 children)
FTFY
Almost any organization eventually seeks to maximize power. It doesn't matter whether it's a government/"authority" organization, a company/corporation, an interest group, a criminal organization, …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
that's fine but government orgs have the authority/ability to use force so it kind of makes a difference. i can choose not to enter into a contract with the seditious whores at AT&T, for instance.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday March 30 2018, @05:44PM
You can only go so far avoiding it.
For a long time I went without credit card. But then, I just had to accept that it was no longer possible to go completely without; some things you cannot get without it any more (in particular, I had problems to book hotels and flights). I still only use it very sparingly, though.
Also note that just because a company has no contract with you does not mean it has no power on you. You may not have a contract with AT&T, but AT&T may still be the reason why you don't get a contract with another company under terms to your likings. Or it may be the reason why you get shitty data rates getting data from a site AT&T disapproves, because your connection to that site somewhere passes AT&T's network. Or the fact that you don't have a contract with them might, through connections you don't know about, affect negatively your credit rating.
The good thing about governments is that they at least have greater difficulties to keep stuff secret than private companies (yes, the government can and does keep stuff secret, including stuff that shouldn't be; however that's nothing compared to the secrecy of private corporations).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @08:49PM
How is this relevant? The critique is just as valid regardless of how many other offenders there are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @01:32PM
Everybody who votes D team R team is responsible for this. The FBI is nowhere in the constitution. When will people finally figure out that neither the R team nor D team gives a flying fuck about you if you don't make at least 6 figures? When will people figure out that staying home is not protest. Our system doesn't tally abstaining votes!
The constitution is not a magical piece of paper or one of those anarcho-capitalist self-enforcing contracts! You have to elect politicians who respect it and its principles, and you have to stop voting for politicians--blackball politicians who do not respect it. How can you move on to the ammo box when you're completely failing at using either the jury box or ballot box effectively. The ammo box is last resort only for a reason. Because if you can't use the soap (protests), jury (nullification), and ballot (no votes for corrupt parties) boxes correctly, you don't have the right to use the ammo box.
If you want a system where staying home from the polls is a form of political authority, stop voting D and R! If you don't go to the polls, you are not exercising political authority. If you go to the polls and vote R team D team, you are saying you're happy with the status quo, and who the fuck is happy with the status quo? Who the fuck is honestly happy with boy-type Clinton, Dubya, Obummer, and Cadet Bone Spurs?!
Look into the Greens! Look into the Libertarians! Both of those parties are serious about changing the status quo. Both of those parties are principled, and handily enough one is a principled left-wing party and the other is a principled right-wing party. Look into them and take a pick.
Unless